The rise and rise of Ibiza as the clubbers' playground

from the UK Times online

Quote:

The island of Ibiza is partying harder than ever - but is commercialism taking the heart and soul out of club culture?

Last weekend, for the first time in more than a decade, Chemical Brothers topped the bill at We Love Sundays At Space in Ibiza. When Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons last played at the huge club, regularly voted the world’s best, the duo were booed off after three tracks by a hostile crowd unwilling to embrace their unconventional “big beat” sound. The DJs refused to leave the decks and — eventually — Pepe Rosello, the owner of Space, was forced to pull the plug. They have not been back until now.

As Sunday turned into Monday, thousands of sunburnt, pilled-up, mainly British ravers packed Space’s cavernous Discoteca to hear the Chems begin their set. Rowlands and Simons are used to playing big crowds, but they looked nervous, puffing out cheeks and sucking hard on cigarettes before the off. As a breathy vocal asked: “Are you ready?”, a sweaty dancefloor too packed for dancing roared approval — the room was flooded with light, dry-ice cannons fired and Chemical Brothers launched into a pulsating four-hour set of ferocious beats and hands-in-the-air moments that left the still throbbing mob chanting, “One more, one more, one more.”

While such vast crowds are packing Ibiza’s biggest clubs to hear the crème de la crème of British dance music, the man who inspired Ibizan house music fears that the scene he began is ruining the island he still lives on and loves. The Argentine DJ Alfredo, now 55, was a journalist with Latin America’s oldest newspaper who found himself forced to flee the junta’s repression. He eventually wound up on Ibiza. By 1985, he was running a nightclub in the centre of the island named Amnesia. Across the road, the much more popular Ku club attracted dressy 1980s hipsters to dance to the likes of Grace Jones, Freddie Mercury and Boy George.

Forced to wait hours after he closed Amnesia for the owner to arrive and pay him, Alfredo decided to keep the club open. He spun a selection of wildly eclectic vocal records, merged with harder new disco sounds from an exciting club in Chicago named House. Within weeks, the crowds leaving Ku were queuing outside to carry on the party at Amnesia, and the world’s first after-hours daytime club was born.

At much the same time, supplies of MDMA began flooding the island. The drug, sold to clubbers in pills as “ecstasy”, made users deliriously happy and helped party- goers dance for hours in the sunshine. All music sounded better on the drug, but the shiny textures of electronic music went perfectly with the experience. Alfredo’s radical new Balearic sound made a potent cocktail.

In 1987, four English soul-boy DJs — Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker — went to Ibiza for some fun in the sun, were blown away by Alfredo’s Amnesia and vowed to take Balearic house music back to the UK. By the summer of 1988, their London party, Shoom, had kicked off the UK’s dance-music scene (known as “acid house” in the media). Two decades on, Ibiza’s biggest clubs are dominated by British DJs, promoters and bands. Last weekend, Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx, Oakenfold and Pete Tong all played there. So, what is its enduring appeal as a party island — particularly for the Brits?

It has been a magnet for hedonists since early history. The Carthaginians set up a cult to their goddess of sex there in 654BC, and named Ibiza after Bez, their god of dance, whose statues still litter the rocky coast. Later, Roman aristocracy headed to Ibiza for downtime, and in the 1960s it became a stop on the hippie trail.

How have things changed? “In the 1980s, we were in the open air, there were fewer people and it was more cosmopolitan,” says a tired-sounding Alfredo. “On the dancefloor, you found old people, young people, black people, white people, kids, families. There were no promoters, no expensive drinks, no €70 entrance fees. There were more VIP people, but nobody rushed up to George Michael or Grace Jones for a photo. They were left alone to enjoy themselves.”

Spend an afternoon on an Ibiza beach today and you are bombarded by troupes of wandering promoters thrusting flyers in your hands, typically accompanied by scantily clad beauties in the club’s colours. Each night, the big clubs go head-to-head to attract partygoers willing to pay at least €50 admission and hundreds of euros on staggeringly overpriced drinks: a bottle of 25cl water costing €8 is the cheapest.

“Twenty years ago, there was no hype,” Alfredo says. “That is the biggest difference. Today, it’s good business for the record labels. They’ve developed a place that is a showcase for British bands. It’s much more commercial.” Is all this commercialism good for Ibiza? “The island is more expensive now, and there’s a huge difference between the busy months of summer and the rest of the year,” he says. “But it’s not just Ibiza that changed — the world changed. The whole love vibe has disappeared.”

Today, it seems the island’s government is attempting to attract a more exclusive type of tourist. Extensive road and port improvements have drawn the ire of local environmentalists, clubs have been forced to close during the day and all new hotels on the island must be five-star. “The authorities have made mistakes,” Alfredo claims. “They dream of a VIP island. They want to stop young people and families coming. They want to get rid of the people who have made them rich. They don’t realise that Ibiza was already full of genuine VIPs, not pretentious people pretending to be VIPs. There’s one record that says everything: “Le freak, c’est chic”. Ibiza has become a ‘bling’ island.”

Each August, the international jet set decamps to Ibiza en masse. Last weekend, there was little evidence of the credit crunch biting, as a succession of £100,000 villa parties drew celebrities such as Kate Moss, Jade Jagger and Sly Stallone. At the same time, thousands of clubbers packed Pacha’s vast main room for Basement Jaxx. Now busy working on their fifth album, the south London band have taken a residency at the Ibizan institution (opened in 1973) to get out of the studio and try new tracks on a big crowd. They agree that the commercialised Ibiza scene has moved a long way from the life-changing vibe inspired by Alfredo two decades ago.

“I really loved the original Balearic music,” says Basement Jaxx’s Felix Buxton. “Now, music-wise, there’s not much spiritual integration. People are on holiday, getting off their face, having a great weekend, which is cool — but it’s nothing to do with art, or spiritual growth. It’s just a good party in the sun.” Clearly, though, there are benefits for those paid royally from the clubs’ swelling coffers? “As a DJ, you can earn good money, and it’s a nice vibe, so it’s a good place to be,” Buxton says. “As for the music, it’s not like the Summer of Love is still here. The clubs are playing the same electro house you’ll hear in Hartlepool.”

“I overheard a hen do on the plane,” he adds. “They had their diaries out, planning their entire holiday. They had their line-ups, their booze and fags all planned out. And, really, what’s wrong with people working hard so they can then go absolutely mental? It’s just that, when we first came, I really felt Ibiza was a place where lives were changed. It’s so controlled, it’s an industry now. There’s nothing underground about it, it’s underground music for a mass market.”

Where once people danced in the open air on terraces overlooking the sea, today the island’s club scene has evolved into a hugely lucrative night-time cash cow, an intoxicating way of parting fools from their money. And these clubbers seem happily resigned to their fate, willing to part with vast sums to escape the drudgery of work for a week’s hedonism in the sun. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this, but decadence for decadence’s sake seems a particularly adolescent philosophy — and, as a scene, Ibiza is no longer a teenager.

We Love Sunday's At Space runs to Sunday 28 September. Pacha Ibiza is open all year.